Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
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Porphyrogenitos
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Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

It feels a bit spammy now, but I often get somewhat-well-developed ideas for conlangs, and instead of making a new thread for each of them (like with the Estotiland thread), this will keep myself from making more clutter in the long term.

For a while I've been fiddling with a Finno-Ugric/Uralic-inspired thing with consonant gradation and vowel alternations.

The language starts off with a (C)V(C) syllable structure, permitting homorganic nasal-consonant and geminate clusters word-medially, and anything word-finally. It has one series of unaspirated stops and an /a i u/ vowel system.

The daughter has a strict (C)V syllable structure, with three series of stops: unvoiced, voiced, and prenasalized. There is a series of phonemic geminate nasals. It has an /a e i o u ə/ vowel system, with historical short /i/ and /u/ lowering, and historical long /a/ raising to /o/.

The series of sound changes go like this:

Initial stage
Open vowels lengthen
Consonant gradation (lenition of non-word-initial syllable-initial consonants in closed syllables)
Loss of final h
Loss of geminates
Assimilation after nasals
Collapse to 5-vowel system
Paragoge of schwa
Voicing initial fricatives

Here's an idea for the development of some basic nominal morphology:

"eye"
Singular Plural Dual
supu supuh suput
sūpū sūpuh sūput
sūpū sūuh sūut
sūpū sūu sūut
sūpū sūu sūut
sūpū sūu sūut
supu suo suot
supu suo suotə
zupu zuo zuotə

"spoon"
Singular Plural Dual
suppu suppuh supput
suppū suppuh supput
suppū subuh subut
suppū subu subut
supū subu subut
supū subu subut
sopu sobo sobot
sopu sobo sobotə
zopu zobo zobotə

"clasp, button, brooch"
Singular Plural Dual
kampi kampih kampit
kampī kampih kampit
kampī kambih kambit
kampī kambi kambit
kampī kambi kambit
kambī kammi kammit
kambi kamme kammet
kambi kamme kammetə
kambi kamme kammetə

"lake"
Singular Plural Dual
kami kamih kamit
kāmī kāmih kāmit
kāmī kāmih kāmit
kāmī kāmi kāmit
kāmī kāmi kāmit
kāmī kāmi kāmit
komi kome komet
komi kome kometə
komi kome kometə

"cheek, jaw"
Singular Plural Dual
kammi kammih kammit
kammī kammih kammit
kammī kamih kamit
kammī kami kamit
kamī kami kamit
kamī kami kamit
kami kame kamet
kami kame kametə
kami kame kametə

"river"
Singular Plural Dual
issi issih issit
issī issih issit
issī izih izit
issī izi izit
isī izi izit
isī izi izit
esi eze ezet
esi eze ezetə
esi eze ezetə

"heart"
Singular Plural Dual
uŋki uŋkih uŋkit
uŋkī uŋkih uŋkit
uŋkī uŋgih uŋgit
uŋkī uŋgi uŋgit
uŋkī uŋgi uŋgit
uŋgī uŋŋi uŋŋit
oŋgi oŋŋe oŋŋet
oŋgi oŋŋe oŋŋetə
oŋgi oŋŋe oŋŋetə

"hand"
Singular Plural Dual
kuku kukuh kukut
kūkū kūkuh kūkut
kūkū kūuh kūut
kūkū kūu kūut
kūkū kūu kūut
kūkū kūu kūut
kuku kuo kuot
kuku kuo kuotə
kuku kuo kuotə
Last edited by Porphyrogenitos on Mon Jun 13, 2016 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by mèþru »

Is this from the same world as Estotiland?
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

mèþru wrote:Is this from the same world as Estotiland?
I don't think so. I mean I guess it could be, if I wanted it to be. If I have any new Estotian stuff I'll post it here and let the original thread fall off the page.

---

I'm thinking that this language originally used postpositions, which eventually developed into cases. Adjectives originally declined for number, but also came to be marked for case, as well.

Initial stage - postposition follows entire noun phrase:
suppuh ummah kuku lina pa
suppu-h umma-h kuku lina pa
spoon-PL new-PL hand old GEN
"[the] new spoons of [the] old hand" (I know, what utter nonsense)

Syntactic change - postpositions follow every element in noun phrase:
suppuh ummah kuku pa lina pa

Postpositions reanalyzed as suffixes:
suppuh ummah kukupa linapa

After sound changes:
zobo oma kukupa linapa
spoon.PL new.PL hand-GEN old-GEN

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Vijay »

Is there any natural language where the vowel in every open syllable was ever lengthened?

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Post by Nortaneous »

Germanic?
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Vijay »

In Pre-Proto-Germanic, word-final long vowels were lengthened to "overlong" vowels, and then word-final non-high short vowels were deleted in early Proto-Germanic, but I still don't see evidence of the vowel in every open syllable being lengthened. If that had happened in Proto-Germanic, surely we should expect to see *fādēr rather than *fadēr for instance.

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Vijay wrote:Is there any natural language where the vowel in every open syllable was ever lengthened?
Well, I could have chosen to describe it as the vowel in every closed syllable becoming shortened. The key issue was that a non-contrastive distinction emerged, like the lengthening of English vowels before voiced stops, which became contrastive later on. (Don't blame me, I got the idea from the Sound Change Quickie Thread...)

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

A concept for a language with initial consonant mutation:

The language initally has a small phoneme inventory, just:

/a i u/
/p t k b d g m n r s/

With (C)V(C) syllable structure, with only alveolar consonants /t d n r s/ permitted in the coda. [n] assimilates to the POA of the following consonant. Stops and fricatives assimilate to the voicing of the following consonant.

Then, a wide-ranging change happens in which all word-initial and postvocalic consonants undergo lenition.

For each consonant, these are the steps:

[p] > [f] > [h]
[t] > [θ] > [h]
[k] > [h] > [∅]
> [v] > [w]
[d] > [ð] > [w]
[g] > [ɣ] > [∅]
[m] > [ṽ] > [w]
[n] > [z̃] > [z]
[r] > [∅]
[s] > [z]
[ŋ] (only occurs before [k]) > [w]

The exceptions are the geminates [ss], [rr], , and [dd], in which the first element is preserved from lenition, and the cluster degeminates.

Preconsonantal [z] then assimilates in voicing to the following consonant, but in any case, preconsonantal and syllable-final [z] and [s] both debuccalize and merge with [h].

Syllable-final [w] monophthongizes with the previous vowel. [uw] > , [iw] > , [aw] > [o].

Now the only permitted syllable-final consonant is [h].

When a consonant-final word precedes a closely connected word, such as an article preceding a noun, the first consonant of the following word is also preserved from lenition, as if it were a word-internal postconsonantal noun.

This produces two possible forms for word-initial consonants, which become lexicalized/grammaticalized and spread by analogy, becoming truly phonemic in the word-initial position.

Unmutated (Weak) - Strong
/h/ - /p/
/h/ - /t/
/∅/ - /k/
/w/ - /b/
/w/ - /d/
/∅/ - /g/
/w/ - /m/
/z/ - /n/
/∅/ - /r/
/z/ - /s/

As you can see, this means that the unmutated forms of numerous words will have merged. This language has a noun class system, so the distinction between these words is preserved by noun class agreement marked on articles, adjectives, and verbs.

However, this paradigm is still not particularly stable. While, perhaps over the millenia, the unmutated forms will be dropped in favor of the strong forms - as the irregular Latin nominative was dropped in favor of the more regular accusative - in the meantime, a different phenomenon happens. Speakers will innovate new strong forms for words through analogy and spontaneous change - or, to put it in a non-scholarly manner, they'll mix up the strong forms. E.g. a speaker might use the somewhat uncommon word [wahba] (from historical [baspar]) - its "correct" strong form is [bahba], but they might not remember that and decide that [dahba] sounds better. This change then spreads and then you have two different groups of speakers, one saying [bahba] after certain words, and the other saying [dahba] after those same certain words.

The new phoneme inventory of this language is:

/a i o u/
/p t k b d g m n s z r w h/

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Post by Porphyrogenitos »

I think I may introduce another series of sound change during the formative era of consonant mutations, in which preservative assimilation takes place after nasals.

[mp] > [mb]
[nt] > [nd]
[ŋk] > [ŋg]
(voiced stops remain unchanged)
[ns] > [nz]
[nr] > [nn]

Geminates and preconsonantal/syllable-final consonants then develop and dissipate as otherwise indicated. This change also extends across word boundaries, producing a nasal mutation:

Unmutated (Weak) - Strong - Nasal
/h/ - /p/ - /b/
/h/ - /t/ - /d/
/∅/ - /k/ - /g/
/w/ - /b/ - /b/
/w/ - /d/ - /d/
/∅/ - /g/ - /g/
/w/ - /m/ - /m/
/z/ - /n/ - /n/
/∅/ - /r/ - /n/
/z/ - /s/ - /z/
(Furthermore, historically vowel-initial words in nasal-triggering contexts get a prothetic [n].)

The fun thing about this is that there are even more "reused" consonants within and across classes, giving me more opportunity to wreak havoc with reanalysis and analogy.

For example, imagine the plural of a noun had to be in the nasal mutation. Singular [hapa] "water" (from historical [tarpa]) would become plural [dapa] "waters" - the way we use "waters" to refer to oceans or bodies of water. But then, imagine this plural [dapa] were reanalyzed as a definite singular in the strong class, simply meaning "the ocean" or "the sea". A new, identical plural, [dapa] would then be innovated, meaning "oceans".

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Post by Nortaneous »

Vijay: In some Germanic languages (e.g. Icelandic), stressed vowels are short before long consonants and clusters and long otherwise. If you have that system in a language that doesn't have word-final geminates, you have vowels lengthening in every open syllable.
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Vijay »

Okay, thanks! :)

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Post by Porphyrogenitos »

I've come up with yet another revision to this system, resulting in considerably more consonants that eventually collapse down to much fewer.

Starting with:

/p t k m n l s h/

/a i u ai̯ au̯/

(C)V(C) syllables with any consonant in the coda

Consonants before /i/ or after /ai̯/ are palatalized.

Consonants, including the new palatal series, are lenited between vowels, and voiced or nasalized after nasals. These changes are extended across word boundaries in certain contexts. This produces, at the very beginning, a wide array of initial mutations:

Unmutated - Palatal - Soft - Nasal
p p f b
t tʲ θ d
k kʲ x g
m mʲ ṽ m
n nʲ z̃ n
l lʲ ∅ n
s sʲ z z
h hʲ ∅ h
tʲ tʲ θʲ dʲ
kʲ kʲ xʲ gʲ
mʲ mʲ ṽʲ mʲ
nʲ nʲ z̃ʲ nʲ
lʲ lʲ j nʲ
sʲ sʲ zʲ zʲ
hʲ hʲ j̊ hʲ
∅ j ∅ n

After many mergers, this paradigm eventually boils down to:

Unmutated - Palatal - Soft - Nasal
p p f b
t ç ∅ d
k ç ∅ g
m ɲ v m
n ɲ z n
l ʝ ∅ n
s ç z z
∅ ç ∅ ∅
ç ç ç ʝ
ç ç ç ʝ
ɲ ɲ ʝ ɲ
ɲ ɲ ʝ ɲ
ʝ ʝ ʝ ɲ
ç ç ʝ ʝ
ç ç ç ç
∅ ʝ ∅ n

...Which of course wreaks absolute havoc on the mutation system, which experiences numerous instances of the types of analogy, reanalysis, and spontaneous change I described above. With enough time, the system either reaches some kind of equilibrium or is dropped completely.

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Post by Porphyrogenitos »

A language unrelated to the previous ideas discussed on this page. It is still unnamed and I have hardly developed the phonology at all, but I have thought out a good bit of grammar. So at this time I'm just demonstrating it with glosses and mashed-together English words in order to illustrate various constructions.

Grammatical gender


There are two grammatical genders/noun classes, artificial and natural. (I previously called them made and unmade, which I think expresses the concept better, but artificial and natural are less likely to be confused.) Gender is generally assigned by semantic criteria, but some nouns’ gender is dependent on morphological criteria, or is due to analogy.

The artificial class mostly contains things that are made by humans (tools, buildings, cooked food, ornaments, etc.).

The natural class largely contains anything not made by humans (humans themselves, animals and other living things, land, water, gods and spirits). However, there are some exceptions in both cases. (For example, words for highly-significant human-made sites or artifacts passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial might fall into the natural (unmade) class, as if they were always-existent or had been handed down by the gods.)

Noun classes can play a derivational role; for example, the word for “fire” is natural, but the word for “flashlight” was coined by adding the morphology of the artificial class to the word “fire”.

Possession

There are two methods of indicating possession. The original method involves prefixed pronouns attached to nouns (e.g. “the me-house” for “my house”). The second, newer method involves placing a locative noun after the possessed noun (e.g. “the house to-me” for “my house”).

On top of the gender distinction, nouns are also sorted into three classes that govern how they can be possessed: Obligatorily possessed, possessable, and unpossessable.

Obligatorily possessed nouns must always have a prefixed pronoun, even if they are being discussed in general without reference to who possesses them. In such a case, they are prefixed with a generic zero pronoun, essentially translating as “someone’s”. Most obligatorily possessed nouns belong to the natural class, and include family members, body parts, part-whole relations, and emotions.

Possessable nouns can take a prefixed pronoun, or not. Most possessable nouns belong to the artificial class, and include personal belongings, built properties, and domestic animals.

Unpossessable nouns cannot take a prefixed pronoun. To express possession of an unpossessable noun, one must use a circumlocution consisting of the possessed noun followed by a locative noun. Most unpossessable nouns belong to the natural class, and include humans (with certain exceptions, such as the word “slave”), wild animals, land, natural resources, celestial bodies, gods and spirits, and abstract concepts.

A noun can take both a possessive prefix and a locative possessive, subject to certain restrictions. Ordinarily, to express that a noun belongs to another noun using a possessive prefix, the uninflected possessor would precede the possessed noun, e.g. “John his-house”. But for extra emphasis, a postposed locative noun can be used, e.g. “his-house to-John” (“John’s own house”). One cannot use discordant possessors with a single noun – one cannot say “my-house to-John” – except when a circumlocution is being used to express circumstantial possession of an obligatorily possessed noun prefixed with the generic zero pronoun, e.g. “someone’s-mother to-me” (“my mother, but not my own mother” – a mother that has been assigned to me, such as in a group during a parents’ workshop, for example).

Adpositions

Adpositions originated from locative nouns, and still in many ways function as nouns. They are placed after a noun, in the same way as an ordinary locative noun. However, many adpositions that began as obligatorily possessed nouns no longer require a prefixed pronoun due to grammaticalization. The word for “on top of” is identical to the word for “head-[locative]”, except that “on top of” takes no prefixed pronoun, while “head-[locative]” must.

Case

There is a locative case, a comitative case, and other cases not yet described.

The locative case is used to indicate location or direction, and is used with a type of possessive construction, as previously described.

The comitative case has undergone a semantic extension somewhat similar to the English preposition with, but excluding an instrumental sense. The comitative case is thus used both for “accompanied by” and “characterized by” – similar to how we can say “She parties with her friends” and “She parties with style”. The locative case can also be used with the sense of “characterized by” in certain cases – compare the English “She parties in style”.

Adjectives and adverbs

There are a number of different word classes that varyingly overlap with the English categories of adjective and adverb.

There are no "true adjectives" as in English and other IE languages. There are, instead, a class of stative verbs, e.g. an illustrative back-translation of "She is tall" from this language would be "She talls."

There is a class of words which are derived from the phrase “go with [noun]”. It originally would have literally referred to the conditions a person worked or moved about in (e.g. “He goes with darkness” – he only goes around under cover of dark), but then referred to the state a person was in during their daily activities (“She goes with sorrow” – she goes about all day being sad), and then finally came to simply refer to the person’s attributes (“She goes with beauty” – she’s beautiful). The “go” here might have turned into a copula, but instead it was grammaticalized into a prefix similar to the English “-ful” or “-filled”. This group of words is formed by prefixing a contracted version of the verb “go” to a noun in the comitative case, and can modify both verbs and nouns. (“She go-speed-COM” – she is quick, “She works go-speed-COM” – she works quickly)

Simple nouns in the comitative case can be used similarly and can modify both nouns and verbs as well, but the two groups of words are subject to arbitrary semantic drift, much in the way the English terms “graceful”, “grace-filled”, and “full of grace” all mean somewhat different things.

More details on other aspects of the language to come.

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Here's a little thing I came up with about a language with an unmarked default/masculine and a marked feminine, that switches to a default/feminine and marked masculine system. Likely undergoing further revision after I read up some more on masculine-feminine noun classes outside IE.

This contrasts the development of two similar noun stems. Stress is word-final.

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Post by mèþru »

You have a biconsonantal root now! Is that intentional?
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

mèþru wrote:You have a biconsonantal root now! Is that intentional?
Oh, huh. I didn't even notice that. That's interesting. Though those two consonants, /tm/, are probably gonna stay smushed together like that, unless a suffix is added that shifts the original stress one syllable to the right. Also note that the /s/ isn't strictly speaking a suffix, it's just a part of the root that disappears in some forms - other noun roots will have other initial consonants such as /t/ or /l/ or whatever.

And things might look significantly different for noun roots with shapes like VCVC or VCVCV or CVCCV, depending on what root shapes the proto-language allows. If anything happens with this biconsonantal root thing, it'll probably actually be a triconsonantal root(-ish) system whose first consonant only surfaces in some forms, and which also has an inherent vowel harmony class and maybe an inherent vowel too.

But I need to decide on how the proto-language's gender system was grammaticalized to begin with before I move onto details like that. (I'm thinking maybe it was the result of widespread compounding with a third person feminine pronoun or pronoun-like form - cf. English she-wolf, she-devil, etc.) Although if anyone has any ideas on how these kinds of root disfixations could be used interestingly with verbs I'd gladly hear them.

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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Some ideas for a language with templatic reduplication I've had:

Clusters are only permissible syllable-initially. Permissible clusters consist of a nasal + homorganic stop, a stop + a liquid, or a stop both preceded by a homorganic nasal and followed by a liquid. Stops in clusters are always voiced.

Stress is always penultimate. I might do something with tone or pitch-accent, I'm not sure.

katʃa - to cut, slice (with a broad stroke, esp. with a sword)
kəkatʃakatʃa - to chop, dice
katʃakuŋa - to totally cut, to slash fatally, to sever (as in a beheading)

ʒivu - to zip
ʒəʒivuʒivu - to zip up and down

pola - to burn
pəpolapola - to crackle, to spark
polapuŋa - to burst into a conflagration, to burn fiercely

rilu - to drink
rədiludilu - to take a bunch of little sips
riluruŋu - to chug, gulp

aki - to build
anakiaki - to loaf around on the job, to avoid work, to mess around, to procrastinate

modute - to donate, give as a gift
modutedute - to give (a token), to give as a part of a series of gifts

tele - to bloom
təteletele - to blush
teletuŋe - to burgeon, flourish

blosa - ?
bləbosabosa - ?

glemu - to perspire
gləgemugemu - to sweat all over, a lot
glemuguŋu - ?

rimba - ?
rədimbadimba - ?
rimbaruŋa - ?

mbrambu - ?
mbrəbambubambu - ?

boʒa - woman
boʒiʒa - woman (diminutive)
boʒiba - woman (diminutive)

kara - man
karira - man (diminutive)
karika - man (diminutive)

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